Better Organized Volunteers = MORE FUN I can’t think of another sport as reliant on voluntary parent participation as summer swimming. Summer swim teams couldn’t function without a handful of dedicated neighborhood parents. Here I’m talking about the head parents, willing to put in hours outside of the season to make sure all the decisions are made, coaches hired, equipment stocked, and systems … [Read more...]
Swim Team Management
New Feature: Leagues Can Now Share Roles with Member Teams for Easy Communication
SwimTopia offers the boards of summer/recreational swim leagues free websites to help them manage the teams in their league. No matter how many teams in the league use SwimTopia, any league is eligible for a free website. Whether your league manages 6 teams, or 60, it’s helpful to have a central hub for league information, documents and contacts. SwimTopia provides an easy-to-use website for any … [Read more...]
How SwimTopia pays for itself…and then some!
Photos [1] [2] by Gerd Altmann and Aquilatin, respectively Swim teams, especially summer and high school swim teams, run on tight budgets. Because they are largely volunteer-run and mostly non-profit, swim teams often find it challenging to provide quality swim programs for their community – at an affordable price – while staying financially afloat. For some teams, the total price of … [Read more...]
Starting and Running a Sponsorship Program for Your Swim Team
Photo by pasja1000 Summer and high school swim teams are typically volunteer run, non-profit, organizations that try to keep membership costs low. How can teams afford to buy or upgrade the equipment needed for running meets (chairs, tents, stop watches, timing systems, flags, the list goes on), and maintain a coaching staff, on membership dues alone? A healthy sponsorship program is … [Read more...]
Help Your Team Parents: Things They Should Know About SwimTopia
Your team has just signed up for this amazing new swim team management platform and you want to help team parents make use of all the great features. How can you help team parents get the most out of this exciting treasure trove of features and information? For the main functions of SwimTopia that your parents use (registration, meet and job sign up, website and account login, and viewing … [Read more...]
Making the Most of Your SwimTopia Reports
The power of SwimTopia is in the integration of your team’s information; to harness that power you need to be familiar with our reporting options and capabilities. SwimTopia reports give you the flexibility you need, to find the information you want. During the swim season SwimTopia added some reports and upgraded the functionality of others. We have a great selection of reports; read on to … [Read more...]
Wrapping Up the Summer Season
Swim season is coming to a close and you’re both excited and sad at the same time. You’re excited to get your spare time back, after being in ‘volunteer overtime’ for the last 2 (or 3) months, but you’re sad another fun filled season is coming to an end (and the pool is going to seem awfully quiet). Here are some tips and suggestions for wrapping up the summer season, putting a bow on it, and … [Read more...]
How to Choose Your “Most Improved” Swimmers and other End-of-Season Awards
Most teams have some kind of “Most Improved” award at the end of the season; we’ve talked to teams all over the country and it seems there are many different ways teams decide how to award Most Improved Swimmers! For some teams it might be for the biggest time drop throughout the season, or the biggest time drop from the last season to this one, it might be subjective and chosen by the coaches for … [Read more...]
Encourage Signups for Your Next Meet with “Upcoming Events” Snippet
Many of our teams have begun their seasons, and meets are well underway. Make it easy for your parents to sign up for meet entries and volunteer shifts for your next meet by embedding the next swim meet option of our Upcoming Events snippet on your page template. The Upcoming Events snippet offers two options: Display several upcoming events (you can set the number) Display the next … [Read more...]
Best Practices for Meet and Event Setup
Summer swim season is ramping up, registrations are coming in, and practices have begun in our warmer states! As you launch into your summer season, we’d like to make sure your meet and event setup is correct from the get-go! Meet and Event Setup In the SwimTopia world, we have two kinds of events: 1) Swim Meets – complete with swim events (i.e., Girls 6 & Under 25 Free, Boys 7-8 25 Back, … [Read more...]
